Access to Knowledge Bulletin — November 2012

This is the third Access to Knowledge newsletter from the CIS team in Delhi! This issue gives a summary of the first Odia Wikipedia education program, workshops organised in Bhubaneswar and Delhi, a meet-up held in Kolkata, hackathons held in Delhi and Hyderabad, and news and media coverage during the month of November.

Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation has awarded CIS a two-year grant of upto INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program has become the Access to Knowledge (A2K) program of the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). In this issue we bring you updates from the Kolkata wiki community, the Odia wiki community, a report of a workshop organized exclusively for women in Mumbai, Wikipedia hackathon organised in Delhi and Hyderabad, and the recent news and media coverage. Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications at http://bit.ly/TOcXId.

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

Support Us

You may donate online via Instamojo. Or, write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru, 560071.

Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil[at]cis-india[dot]org or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro[at]cis-india[dot]org, with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in.

In general, we offer financial support for collaborative/invited works only through public calls.

About Us

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfiguration of social processes and structures through the internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa.

Through its diverse initiatives, CIS explores, intervenes in, and advances contemporary discourse and practices around internet, technology and society in India, and elsewhere.